Written by Atharva Mehendale, Community Project Manager - URI North India & Afghanistan
Porsesh Research and Studies Organization (PRSO) is an independent non-profit research organization based in Kabul, Afghanistan. It was established with a vision to produce and disseminate quality research, and to promote the culture of research in Afghanistan. Foundation stone of the organisation was laid in August 2015 with an aim to provide quality and fact-based research for policy-based decision making. Since its inception, PRSO has been working in 5 key focus areas:
- culture and pluralism
- peacebuilding and conflict resolution
- governance and the rule of law
- youth & women empowerment
- economic development
In addition to the above-mentioned areas, the organization has laid its focus on the status of minority rights in the country. The marginalization of Afghan Hindus and Sikhs has often been an ignored area of research in Afghanistan. In a country where the overwhelming population is Muslim and the state religion Islam, members of non-Muslim minority communities face issues of poverty, unemployment, education deficits and forced conversion. In order to tackle this, PRSO has in place a strong network of volunteers and researchers that work on this very issue. “Ignored Identities – The Status of Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan’s Legal System”, a detailed research piece written by the team examined the rights of non-Muslim Afghan citizens, particularly Hindus and Sikhs, in Afghanistan’s legal system through human rights discourses and a comparative examination of Afghanistan’s laws on a chronological basis since 1923. The report brought to light the contradictory & discriminatory legal system in the country - in terms of civil and human rights. This paper can be accessed here. Furthermore, in order to boost research and data analysis skills, PRSO conducts a course on Data Analysis with R. The course provides a short but intensive introduction to the field of data analysis; and includes three broad topics: data manipulation with R, data analysis and statistical techniques, and data visualization.
In addition to this, PRSO regularly engages itself in a number of capacity building and peacebuilding initiatives. Facilitated by PRSO’s active partnerships with organizations like United Religions Initiative and Art of Living Foundation among others, it has been successful in bringing together people from different ethnicities and minorities in Afghanistan – to promote the idea of integration and peace among the youth. Though PRSO’s association with URI has been a rather recent one, it has facilitated the participation of the former in a number of events organized by URI in India.
In a diverse and multi-ethnic country like Afghanistan, sustainable peace seems far-fetched without an active involvement of all ethnic groups and communities in the development process. Mr. Ehsan Shayegan, Founder & Director of the organization identifies how modern history of the country has essentially been a history of the ‘majority’ and not all ethnic groups. Many non-Muslim ethnic groups like Jewish Christians, Buddhists and more recently Hindus and Sikhs have been subject to marginalization. While the first two have been wiped off the Afghan landscape, PRSO has been staking all it can to promote and preserve the ones that have sustained. As the organization continues to work, it sees for itself a plan to document the long history of marginalization in Afghanistan with a focus on making available evidence-based open data for the public and other policy-driven institutions to explore and work upon. PRSO has also been compiling and listing information about Afghanistan’s Research Institutions and Think Tanks with a view to enhance communication and foster data sharing and dissemination among research organizations and researchers in the country. Security issues and a lack of resources & funding opportunities to mobilize a professional team are some of the many pressing problems that Afghanistan’s fragile landscape poses as organizations like PRSO work to bring about a positive, sustainable & long-lasting change.
